Slashdot discussion on the Yahoo news that
Robert Soloway, a prolific Internet marketer responsible so much junk e-mail they called him "Spam King" [...] was arrested in Seattle, Washington, a week after being indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of identity theft, money laundering, and mail, wire, and e-mail fraud. Soloway is accused of using botnets to disguise where e-mail originated and of forging return addresses of real people or businesses for his mass mailings. If convicted as charged, Soloway will face a maximum sentence of more than 65 years in prison and a fine of 250,000 dollars.
I'd love to see an end to spam, and I don't have any particular feelings of regret over the possibility that this guy might go to jail, but I just have a hard time imagining the laws we would need to convict spammers but *not* impinge on reasonable fair uses of the internet. It's clear this guy is bad and I'm happy to see him off the internet, but to codify why he's bad, and someone sending some political action emails - or using an open WiFi they don't own - are not bad seems dicey to say the least. Hopefully they can just get him on the identity theft, money laundering, and wire fraud charges.
- jim 5-31-2007 9:13 pm




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